Saturday, 31 December 2016

Nina Simone's daughter continues her exploration of her mother's extraordinary life and career - sharing her personal thoughts and providing a glimpse of the real woman behind the distinctive voice.

This series features unreleased concert tracks and contributions from some of Nina's closest friends - including her high school friend Hannah Ferguson; her niece Joyce Stroud; her close friend Verta Mae Grosvenor; concert promoter Ron Delsener; her friend and Elektra Records A and R man Michael Alago, singer Patti Smith; and her drummer for 18 years - Paul Robinson.

Nina started her musical life as Eunice Waymon, a 5-year old child protégé, learning classical piano with the help of people in her home town. She won a place at New York's famous Juilliard School but was turned down by the elite Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. This was an incredible blow to the young Eunice Waymon, who turned to teaching piano and playing in bars to make ends meet. At this point she took the stage name Nina Simone.

She moved to New York City and signed her first record deal [not reading the small print which would cost her dearly later in her career]. New York was the place to be and Nina became closely associated with the civil rights movement, connected with both the radical black playwright Lorraine Hansberry and Malcolm X. She wrote her first protest song, Mississippi Goddamn, in 1963 - an enraged reaction to the deaths of four children in the bombing of a Sunday school in Alabama.

She also met and married Andy Stroud, who became her manager [and Simone's father]. Throughout the 60s her output was prolific and she toured constantly in the US and Europe, always highlighting the civil rights message.

Nina Simone's daughter Simone explores an extraordinary life and career - sharing her personal thoughts and providing a glimpse of the real woman behind the distinctive voice.

This series features unreleased concert tracks and contributions from some of Nina's closest friends - including her high school friend Hannah Ferguson; her niece Joyce Stroud; her close friend Verta Mae Grosvenor; concert promoter Ron Delsener; her friend and Elektra Records A and R man Michael Alago, singer Patti Smith; and her drummer for 18 years - Paul Robinson.

In part one, we hear about Nina's musical beginnings as Eunice Waymon, a 5-year old child protégé, learning classical piano with the help of people in her home town. She won a place at New York's famous Juilliard School but was turned down by the elite Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. This was an incredible blow to the young Eunice Waymon, who turned to teaching piano and playing in bars to make ends meet. At this point she took the stage name Nina Simone.

She moved to New York City and signed her first record deal [not reading the small print which would cost her dearly later in her career]. New York was the place to be and Nina became closely associated with the civil rights movement, connected with both the radical black playwright Lorraine Hansberry and Malcolm X. She wrote her first protest song, Mississippi Goddamn, in 1963 - an enraged reaction to the deaths of four children in the bombing of a Sunday school in Alabama.

She also met and married Andy Stroud, who became her manager [and Simone's father]. Throughout the 60s her output was prolific and she toured constantly in the US and Europe, always highlighting the civil rights message.

Friday, 30 December 2016

Jarvis Cocker celebrates Roxy Music and reflects on their legacy. First broadcast on Radio 2.

Roxy Music - Oh YeahRoxy Music - Jealous Guy [EG]Roxy Music - More Than ThisRoxy Music - Take A Chance With Me [EG]Roxy Music - Tara [N/A]Roxy Music - AvalonRoxy Music - Love Is A Drug [EG]Roxy Music - Do The StrandRoxy Music - Over You [Virgin]Roxy Music - Virginia Plain

Thursday, 29 December 2016

Jarvis Cocker celebrates Roxy Music and reflects on their legacy. First broadcast on Radio 2.

Roxy Music - Love Is The Drug [Stemra]Roxy Music - Oh YeahRoxy Music - Take A Chance With Me [EG]Roxy Music - More Than ThisRoxy Music - TrashRoxy Music - ManifestoRoxy Music - Dance Away [Dino]Roxy Music - Angel Eyes [EG]Roxy Music - Over You [Virgin]Roxy Music - My Only LoveRoxy Music - The Same Old Scene [EG]Roxy Music - Oh Yeah

Wednesday, 28 December 2016

Jarvis Cocker celebrates Roxy Music and reflects on their legacy. First broadcast on Radio 2.

Roxy Music - Pyjamarama [Virgin]Roxy Music - Street Life [Virgin]Roxy Music - A Song For EuropeRoxy Music - Mother Of Pearl [Virgin]Roxy Music - All I Want Is You [EG]Roxy Music - Both Ends Burning [Virgin]Roxy Music - Love Is The Drug [EG]Roxy Music - Angel Eyes [EG]Roxy Music - Avalon [EG]Roxy Music - More Than This [EG]Roxy Music - Take A Chance With Me [EG]

Evolving
from the late-60s art-rock movement, Roxy Music epitomized fashion,
glamour and innovative music. Through the 70s and 80s, the band released
a string of ground-breaking albums, culminating with the 1982 classic
Avalon. Programme one begins with the band emerging in 1972, making an
instant visual and musical impact. Dressed in bizarre, yet stylish
costumes, the group played a defiantly experimental variation of art
rock with infectious pop hooks. The creative tension between Bryan Ferry
and Brian Eno pulled the band in separate directions but resulted in
two ground-breaking albums.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 2.

Roxy Music - Virginia PlainRoxy Music - Love Is The Drug [EG]Roxy Music - Angel Eyes [EG]Roxy Music - AvalonRoxy Music - Remake/RemodelRoxy Music - Amazona [Expressionn]Roxy Music - 2HBRoxy Music - Virginia PlainRoxy Music - Do The StrandRoxy Music - The Bogus Man [Virgin]Roxy Music - In Every Dream Home A Heartache [Polydor]

Sunday, 25 December 2016

A 25-part series, first broadcast in 1980, covering the years 1955-1979.
The most significant records of each year are set against Pathe and
Movietone newsreels, as well as songs of the year, extracts from Billboard magazine, archive recordings and newspaper clippings read by Bill Bingham.

Saturday, 24 December 2016

A few weeks ago we were lucky to have a Memory Tape from one of our favourite artists, Hannah Peel. Her beautiful selection of music was built around her experiences with dementia, a central theme of her latest album Awake But Always Dreaming which is out now on My Own Pleasure. In fact tomorrow Hannah is hosting a very special performance at Shoreditch Church in London, showcasing the album and raising money for Alzheimer's charities. Inspired by her Memory Tapes experience, Hannah reached out to other people to pull together their own lists, the results of which you can find on her website. Therefore we're very lucky to share with you the Memory Tape of artist, musician, writer and producer Bill Drummond.

“Recorded Music was a major force in my life.

It pushed and shoved and shaped me.

This pushing, shoving and shaping started with Elvis at the picture house as a child in Newton Stewart.But it was not until I was turning 13 in a town called Corby, did it begin to have its full impact.

It is still the Recorded Music that I heard at that age that has had the longest and deepest impact on my life.

It has nothing to do with any sort of objective judgement of this Recorded Music.

It had everything to do with my mind being that of a 13 year old in 1966.

As I turned 50 in and the year was 2003, I became aware that Recorded Music not only had little hold over my emotions, it was also losing its power to affect society, its cultural significance was passing on. It was not only weighed down by its own history, it was being superseded by other ways of communicating in a far more one to one way. Like all other forms of music in previous centuries, Recorded Music was becoming part of a history of a fading century. Recorded Music, whatever the genre it embraced, was the music of the 20th Century, be that music Jazz, Rock, Reggae, Soul etc etc. All of these diverse genres, whatever their history and the genius of individual artists, the music of the 20th Century existed primarily to be consumed in the recorded form, thus existed to be bought, sold and used to hold listener attention between the advertising breaks on commercial radio.

Putting aside the somewhat cynical overview of that last couple of sentences, for me Recorded Music was the greatest art form of the 20th Century. Recorded Music towered above Film and the Paper Back Novel, and far outstripping anything that could be hung in a gallery or collected by a wealthy art collector. Recorded Music was a democratic art form.

For me to attempt to pick my ten favourite pieces of Recorded Music would not only be difficult, it would almost be a lie, as actively listening to Recorded Music no longer plays an active part of my life. That said I still like to hear Recorded Music by accident. As in when walking down a street and I hear some Turkish pop music coming out of a passing shop or car, or maybe when…

Anyway, I know that it was at that age of turning 13 in 1966, and my teenage hormones were kicking in, that recorded music had its biggest and most lasting impact. Thus what I have decided to do is track down, via Google and find out what the Top Twenty was on my 13th birthday in 1966. Once that is done, choose ten records from that chart. As yet I have not checked to see if there were ten records in that weeks Top Twenty, that had a powerful impact on me, but I am very certain there were and are. Not that I think they will have been the greatest records of all time but…

I also know that my own memory is beginning to waver and slide. That I cannot remember what film I saw on television last week, that I too have begun that journey into dementia and all it holds.

So bear with me while I type into Google "UK Top Twenty 29 April 1966"

Two Minutes later.

And this is what I have picked from the Top Twenty on my 13th Birthday and their chart position of that week.

I recommend that if you are caring for or sharing with or just chatting to someone who's memory is beginning to fail them and they are not particularly engaging with what is culturally happening at the moment, track down the Top Twenty on their 13th birthday and get them to choose ten of the tracks and play them back together on You Tube or whatever.

Friday, 23 December 2016

Susan Sarandon continues to explore the major moments of John's life that occurred in the city he called home from the early 70s, when he and Yoko moved there following the break up of The Beatles, until his death on 8 December 1980. Featuring input from friends and family, who lived and worked with Lennon during his New York years, this programme highlights the career-defining moments that were influenced by the Big Apple.

Thursday, 22 December 2016

Susan Sarandon explores the major moments of John's life that occurred in the city he called home from the early 70s, when he and Yoko moved there following the break up of The Beatles, until his death on 8 December 1980. Featuring input from friends and family, who lived and worked with Lennon during his New York years, this programme highlights the career defining moments that were influenced by the Big Apple.

It was on John's first visit to New York in 1964, during The Beatles first US tour, that he was introduced to Bob Dylan. John was inspired by Dylan's lyrical creativity and Lennon's music would never be the same again. John and Yoko returned to New York whenever possible during the Beatles hectic final years and eventually decide to move there permanently in September 1971.

John and Yoko began recording their album, Sometime In New York City, with an agenda to protest against the social injustices they observed in the United States. With Phil Spector producing, and accompanied by members of the Plastic Ono Band, the album was completed in March of 1972 and remains the most overtly political recordings Lennon ever recorded.

In 1975 John retired from music to spend time as a "house husband", raising his son Sean at their Manhattan apartment, before returning to the studio with Yoko in 1980 to record the album Double Fantasy. But on 8 December, John murdered by Mark Chapman, who'd asked the former Beatle for his autograph only hours before he killed him.

Sunday, 18 December 2016

In 1967 the novel 'Logan's Run' proposed a dystopian solution to overpopulation and lack of resources- the (voluntary, willing) self-culling of those over twenty one years of age. 50 years on, the novel's themes of intergenerational war and the redundancy of the old have a particular poignancy.

In this Archive on Four, Ed Howker looks at how the then futuristic themes of 'Logan's Run' have manifested themselves in the reality of 21st century society. Large swathes of the capitalist world seem to have adopted the novel's plot as policy, such as in Silicon Valley, for example, where hardly anyone is over the age of 30. At the same time there is a huge discrepancy in wealth and resources held by the young and old, often held up as the source of conflict in 'generational unfairness'.

Ed Howker looks at the state of the young and the old and asks if implementing a 'Sleepshop', where the 21-year-olds of 'Logan's Run' fade out in a narcotic haze for the benefit of those younger, seems such a bad idea after all.

As the BBC's My Generation season turns its attention to the 80s, another chance to hear Stuart Maconie look back at the pioneering work of British Electric Foundation (BEF), the production company formed by Sheffield-born Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh when The Human League split up in 1980.

BEF released two volumes of Music of Quality and Distinction, in which well-known songs were re-interpreted using synthesizers and sequencers, in order to show that electronic music could have soul. Artists such as Tina Turner and Billy McKenzie of The Associates Turner performed on the albums, which have in turn influenced contemporary artists including La Roux.

Contributors include BEF's Martyn Ware, Heaven 17's Glenn Gregory, Radio 2's Paul Jones and Sandie Shaw, who sang on Music of Quality and Distinction Volume One and Elly Jackson of La Roux.

Wednesday, 14 December 2016

As part of the Art is Everywhere season, there's another chance to hear a programme, first broadcast on Radio 2 in 2008, in which Guy Garvey explores how the LP combined music, cover art, lyrics, liner notes and packaging to become a work of art in its own right.

The
British-born keyboard player and songwriter enjoyed big disco-era
success as part of Heatwave before writing hits for American R&B/pop
stars including Donna Summer, George Benson, Aretha Franklin, James
Ingram, Patti Austin, Herbie Hancock and, most lucratively, Michael
Jackson.

Rod Temperton was a gentle-mannered man from
Cleethorpes. Outside the music industry, few had heard of him, but
everyone knows his songs. Without him the careers of Michael Jackson
career, among many others, would have been very different. Rod
single-handedly wrote and arranged some of the biggest songs in popular
music history including Thriller, Give Me the Night, Boogie Nights,
Always and Forever and Off the Wall, and became one of the most
successful British songwriters of all time.

This programme charts
his remarkable journey from Cleethorpes to Los Angeles, with
contributions from Quincy Jones, George Benson and Patti Austin and many
more. It was first broadcast on Radio 2 in 2006.

Monday, 12 December 2016

Three bands influenced rock legend Alice Cooper more than any other: The Yardbirds, The Kinks, and The Who. All of them British. In this documentary, Alice tells the story of how The Beatles' triumphant arrival in New York City on 7 February 1964, opened the doors to the British Invasion and changed American music forever.

From 1964 to 1966, Britain sent a stream of hits across the Atlantic. Behind The Beatles; Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Dave Clark Five, the Animals, Manfred Mann, Petula Clark, Freddie and the Dreamers, Herman's Hermits, the Rolling Stones and the Troggs all topped Billboard's singles chart.

These invaders had borrowed American rock music and returned it, restyled and refreshed. And after the drab post-war years, suddenly it was cool to be a Brit. American groups emerged who dressed and sounded just like them, such as The Beau Brummels, The Buckinghams and most famously, The Monkees.

The Invasion established the UK record industry as one of the biggest in the world, as well as the idea of bands composing their own tunes. But it lasted only a couple of years. John Lennon's infamous comment that The Beatles were bigger than Jesus was the first nail in the coffin, and eventually British and US artists ceased to sound different from each other.

Alice Cooper describes this exciting time in British music from a US point of view, talking to witnesses such as Beatles' road manager Tony Bramwell and legendary documentary-maker Albert Maysles; copycat bands such as The Buckinghams; and the artists themselves: Gerry Marsden, Petula Clark, Peter Noone from Herman's Hermits, Reg Presley from The Troggs, Lenny Davidson from the Dave Clark Five, The Hollies and Mike Pender from The Searchers.

Saturday, 10 December 2016

Roger Daltrey, lead singer of The Who and a Wilson Pickett fan, tells the story of the soul legend.

Contributors include Wilson's brother Max; his ex-partner Dovie Hall; and soul stars like Bobby Womack and Eddie Floyd, who experienced the exceptional singing talent first hand; as well as the wild side, which earned him the nickname "The Wicked Pickett".

Pickett died in 2006, aged 64, but he left a legacy of classic hits like Mustang Sally, The Land of 1,000 Dances, and In The Midnight Hour. He was determined to be a singing star from an early age and his brother Max remembers how Wilson would always be getting into fights, whilst also singing gospel in church.

Little Richard spoke fondly of his friend at Wilson's funeral and those who loved him, and were influenced by him, sum up the "Wicked One's" legacy.

Sunday, 4 December 2016

The mind of Chris Morris leaks onto radio in this dreamlike combination of comedy and music. With Julia Davis, Kevin Eldon, Sally Phillips and Mark Heap.

Are you still lying curare-still, seeking relief in feigning dead? Then welcome, oo-tazz welcome. Chris Morris is here to help you wallow in the melancholy, for third and final series of this subversive radio classic.

Immediately prior to Blue Jam's initial burst on radio, Chris Morris had caused a furore with Channel 4's Brass Eye. Yet Blue Jam managed to be a total departure from his previous work. Originally airing in the early hours on BBC Radio 1, it's a blend of ambient music, deadpan (sometimes brutal) sketches and offbeat monologues. A whole audio landscape of the subconscious, the ad-hoc low-fi sheen of production lending it a kind of verisimilitude.

In sharp contrast with the personality-led comedies of recent years, Blue Jam makes a virtue of anonymity. Borat scribe Pater Baynham and Father Ted creator Graham Linehan are among the writers. Rightly winning a clutch of Sony Radio Awards, it remains unique - nothing before or after was remotely like it.

Friday, 2 December 2016

Tom Robinson concludes the sad story of the extraordinary British record producer Joe Meek, whose hits included Telstar by The Tornadoes.

Born Robert George Meek on 5 April 1929 in Newent, Gloucestershire, Joe became Britain's premier independent record producer in the early 60s, as renowned for his pioneering recording techniques and eccentric personality as for the futuristic sounds he created.

Thursday, 1 December 2016

Tom Robinson tells the story of the extraordinary British record producer Joe Meek, whose hits included Telstar by The Tornadoes.

Born Robert George Meek on 5 April 1929 in Newent, Gloucestershire, Joe became Britain's premier independent record producer in the early 60s, as renowned for his pioneering recording techniques and eccentric personality as for the futuristic sounds he created.